[Digital Business Africa] – In preparation for the impending release of next-generation Wi-Fi technology later this year, the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) released on this July 10, 2019 to Londona new white paper that provides deployment guidelines for a number of possible scenarios utilizing Wi-Fi 6 technology. With today’s white paper release, operators, enterprises and cities now have the tools needed to embrace and deploy Wi-Fi 6 when it’s released later this year.

Globally,
dependence upon Wi-Fi continues to grow exponentially, driven
by a number of factors:

· Global enterprises this year will generate more than 33 billion exabytes of
IP traffic. By 2022, that number will grow to more than 63 billion exabytes of IP traffic, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23
percent.

· Wi-Fi is the primary access technology in most broadband households,
with 76 percent of US households using Wi-Fi as the primary broadband connection.

Wireless Broadband Alliance releases Wi-Fi 6 guidelines

As this newest white paper from WBA illustrates, savvy deployment of Wi-Fi 6 can mitigate some of the growing pains that Wi-Fi is experiencing, while ensuring that operators, enterprises and vendors meet important service-level agreements (SLAs). As such, the work released today proposes guidelines to ensure SLAs around bandwidth, throughput, latency, traffic prioritization and numerous other factors.

The paper also
provides guidelines for RF planning and design, with consideration given to
factors like band steering, MU-MIMO and adjusting for high-density deployments
that demand increased capacity. Additionally,
today’s release addresses ways that Wi-Fi 6 deployments can provide
seamless mobility and backward compatibility with previous Wi-Fi generation
technology.

“Since its
inception 20 years ago, Wi-Fi has become a fundamental expectation
for consumers and enterprises alike,” said Tiago Rodrigues, General Manager,
WBA. “This latest white paper comes at a crucial time; not only is
global demand for Wi-Fi continuing unabated, but operators worldwide are
ramping up 5G networks, and governmental authorities around the world are
preparing to open 6GHz spectrum to Wi-Fi traffic. Today’s announcement
illustrates the dedication of the WBA and its member companies to providing
timely, expert direction to ensure that Wi-Fi deployments successfully
accommodate all of these global factors.”

To that end, the
paper provides a number of deployment scenarios for Wi-Fi 6,
including public venues, stadiums, residential and multi-dwelling units, the
Internet of Things (IoT) and enterprise WLANs. Today’s release was
developed in conjunction with WBA’s Next Gen Wi-Fi Work Group develop,
including operator representatives from Boingo Wireless, BT and Charter
Communications, as well as vendor representatives from Broadcom, Cisco and
CommScope.

Several industry
experts weighed in about the importance of Wi-Fi 6 deployment guidelines:

“Technologies
like Wi-Fi 6 and PasspointTM are steering unlicensed networks into the 5G era,
meeting high performance expectations across speed, latency, reliability,
security and traffic management. To realize digital transformations for both
people and things, we’ll need Wi-Fi and its ability to carry the bulk of data
traffic with unparalleled efficiencies,” – Dr. Derek Peterson, CTO at Boingo
Wireless and Co-Chair of
WBA.

“Investment is driven by market opportunities, Wi-Fi-cellular aggregation, customer retention and new business opportunities, such as IoT,” said Dr. Youngseok Oh, Manager, SK Telecom. “SK Telecom has been engaging in Wi-Fi 6 services that provide reliable, predictable services to customers anytime and anywhere, while also delivering new capabilities and business models.”

“As we work with
mobile and broadband operators around the world, the need for high-capacity
Wi-Fi continues to be a major driver,” said Finbarr Coghlan, CTO,
Accuris Networks. “Wi-Fi 6 addresses a number of critical
requirements being driven by user experience and service delivery demands,
including connecting to more devices simultaneously, interference management
and reduced power consumption, which dramatically improves battery life for
mobile and IoT devices. Accuris is excited to work with our Wi-Fi
equipment partners to realize these benefits to further improve enterprise and
IoT applications over Wi-Fi.”

“Enterprises
like hotels, travel hubs and retail, can use Wi-Fi 6 to build carrier-grade
infrastructure that will complement 5G,” said Chris Bruce, Managing Director,
GlobalReach Technology Inc. and Board Member of WBA. “Deploying Wi-Fi 6
alongside Hotspot 2.0 /NGH allows venue owners to control their entire user
experience. This next generation of Wi-Fi will also allow these venues to
negotiate mobile data offload access to their infrastructure on equal terms
with cellular operators.”

The Wireless Broadband Alliance

Founded in 2003,
the vision of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) is to drive seamless,
interoperable service experiences via Wi-Fi within the global wireless
ecosystem. WBA’s mission is to enable collaboration between service providers,
technology companies and organizations to achieve that vision. WBA undertakes
programs and activities to address business and technical issues, as well as
opportunities, for member companies.

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